Monthly Archives: March 2011

Energy

Obama To Fund Offshore Drilling Technology For Brazil, Part 2

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US Export-Import Bank extends $3 billion credit to Brazil to finance infrastructure projects and offshore oil drilling.  So says the Export-Import Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg, who traveled to Brazil with President Obama.

It’s cool that they are taking an interest in offshore drilling and new offshore technology like floating storage facilities. It’s just too bad that it will be creating no jobs for U.S. workers and plenty of jobs for Brazil and other foreign countries. Isn’t it amazing how generous he is with your money for something he won’t do here?

Here’s an idea: Let American companies do what Obama is paying Brazilian companies to do — drill offshore. We won’t have to pay them money or float them any loans to do it, either. In fact, we will make money off of the leases, while the effort creates hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs in the US, creating more tax revenue rather than emptying out the Treasury.

Links: US Export-Import Bank extends $3 billion credit to Brazil to finance infrastructure projects and offshore oil drilling |  More from Questioning With Boldness |  Gulf Oil CEO: Obama ‘Hypocritical’ on Brazil Drilling

Uncategorized

Horse Molester Out Of Prison

A South Carolina man who twice pleaded guilty to having sex with a horse (the same horse) has been released from prison after 16 months and ordered to stay away from the stable where the animal lives.

It is not clear whether Vereen has to stay 1000 feet from barns, race tracks, and State and County Fairs.

Probation officials said Monday that Rodell Vereen, 51, was let out of prison March 1. He must continue to register as a sex offender.

Media, Politics, United Nations

Obama, No More Empty Words

President Obama was in Chile today and answered questions for the first time since U.N. authorized military action in Libya began.

Some of what he said was ‘we can’t simply stand by with empty words.’

In the real world, what goes around comes around. The President is very convincing when he is speaking and has had the media hypnotized for years.

Anyone with a memory of the 2008 campaign will remember Sen. Obama criticizing Sen. Clinton for her ‘words, just words. Follow the link, you decide who owns empty words.

Economy, Energy, Media, Politics

What ‘Circling The Wagons’ Looks Like

Oh there I go again, picking on President Obama.  Not exactly. But the media is doing their best to hold him harmless for higher energy prices. It’s just a shame that circumstances beyond his control continue to deal him a losing hand.

On the road to a national energy policy, President Barack Obama is hitting pothole after pothole.

‘On the road to a national energy policy?’ Not only has he taken the wrong turn. He is lost. His idea of an energy policy is to not use it. And by all means, don’t get it. Keep on buying it from the Middle East, Russia, and Venezuela. There’s a plan. Make the cost of gasoline so high that it will cripple the economy. Small price to pay to push technologies that do not yet exist in any practical supply.

First, worries over coal-burning plants’ role in global warming prompted Obama . . .

Worries? What worries? By some divine providence, the media ignored candidate Obama’s thoughts on an energy policy where coal is concerned. Candidate Obama said that his Cap and Trade legislation would make it difficult, if not impossible for coal burning electrical generating plants to operate.

[I]f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.

Half of the electricity in the United States comes from coal fired electric plants.

and other Democrats to look more favorably on offshore oil and gas exploration.

Right. That’s why, oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico is still on hold, against court orders to the contrary, nearly a year after the crises that he didn’t let go to waste. And seven months after the Deepwater Horizon leak was plugged. That’s a pothole?

Next came a warmer embrace of nuclear power as part of a possible broad political agreement . . . Now the crisis in Japan is throwing a shadow over nuclear energy worldwide.

Right. And a year before the current crisis in Japan, Obama cut the funding for the only approved site for the disposal of nuclear waste. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.

Making matters worse for Obama, a spike in U.S. gasoline prices is angering Americans just as his re-election campaign cranks up. Experts say gas price fluctuations have almost nothing to do with the tragedy in Japan or the Gulf oil spill. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from lumping various issues together and using them to club Obama.

There’s a really big wagon. Rising gas prices are not his fault. He’s just having a run of bad political luck. Is that what the media, and Democrats, were saying when Bush was in The White House?

In reality, Obama could cause the world market of oil and gasoline to fall overnight, simply on the announcement that he intends to make the United States an oil producer instead of an oil buyer. That would be a part of an energy policy to embrace.

Pointing out the obvious is characterized as taking ‘cheap shots.’ The media takes the Democrat points that, if you point out that stopping oil and gas exploration and development, and if you point out that relying on technologies that are not yet practically available are major factors in rising costs and reasons for instability in the market, then you’re taking a ‘cheap shot’ at President Obama.

“As long as our economy depends on foreign oil,” Obama said, “we’ll always be subject to price spikes.”

So don’t worry. Be happy.

He called for “a comprehensive energy strategy that pursues both more energy production and more energy conservation. We’re working to diversify our entire portfolio with historic investments in clean energy.”

President Obama just said last week that we are using less energy, as if that is a good sign of conserving and using less. Here’s a clue. We are using less because our economy is slowing down. You can’t have both a growing economy and less energy consumption. All the ‘historic investments in clean energy’ are fine, but not at the expense of exploiting our own fossil fuel resources.

The problem here is our President is not the leader America, and the media, had hoped he was. If he were a leader, he would be the one leading America around those potholes, or fixing them and moving forward. Not portraying him, and us, as innocent victims.

Link: Crises In Japan, Gulf Thwart US Energy Accord

Uncategorized

Start Teaching Your Child, Today

I want to share with you a website that is centered around teaching your child, and teaching mothers how to teach their children. I know, it’s a far cry from the political food that is usually on the menu, but it’s no secret how important education, and educating children, is today. Especially when you look at teachers unions and Madison, Wisconsin.  Ahh, there’s the connection.

So if this post just torques the NEA, then it becomes a two-fer.

The website is called The Mommy Teacher. This is a resource that young, new parents should not miss.

Pensacola

Tragic Loss At Tate High School

A 15-year-old student, Gabe Carter, passed away suddenly in class on Thursday. The official cause of death is not yet known.

What is known is how much this young man was loved by his classmates and family.

The NorthEscambia.com website has a post about the tragic event, to which there are 128 comments (as of right now) left by his classmates and relatives.

Please pray for his family and classmates.

Link: Tate High Student Passes Away

 

Media, Organized Labor

Labor Union Calls Boycott On Huffington Post Blog

Oh this is rich. Calling out the left-wing blog Huffington Post for ‘unprofessional and unethical practices,’ the CWA is asking writers to boycott the blog and to not cross that ‘electronic picket line.’

The Newspaper Guild is calling on unpaid writers of the Huffington Post to withhold their work in support of a strike launched by Visual Arts Source in response to the company’s practice of using unpaid labor.

The HuffPo has been called out lately for using the work of reporters and news outlets in their entirety. You know, like stealing the work of others to make it look like your own production. One step above plagiarism. And now for their use of ‘unpaid writers.’

The HuffPo has been doing this sort of stuff from the beginning. So why this action now? Well, now that AOL has purchased the Huffington Post, they suddenly have very deep pockets. The union is saying, if you want us to go away, pay us for our work.

h/t Editor & Publisher

Link: The Newspaper Guild.

Update 3/18/2011: You can’t read this story in the NYT, LAT, or Miami Herald. Not a word about it. Wazzupwidat?

Update 3/21/2011: Dan Abrams has an opinion on ‘the boycott.’ Only mention of it on the Huffington Post is a copy of a tweet.

Economy

Want To Fix Our Economy?

ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS NEED TO HAVE LASTING ANSWERS  

Farid A. Khavari (Ph.D., Economist)

As the economic woes around the world keep growing, politicians and economists fall back on measures that could only be temporary and give them breathing space, until the next round of compounded escalated and accelerated problems kick in.

The existing economic problems, compounded through rising unemployment rates, soaring food and housing costs, foreclosures, runaway healthcare costs, ruinous education debt and other issues, cannot be offset for long or resolved through conventional economic-political measures.

Such non-working measures include stimulus packages, handouts, subsidies, rising wages, grants and reduced tariffs on imported goods. When politicians decide to balance the budget or cut the budget, those economic-political measures will be economically detrimental. Using these contractive measures only compounds the problems even more, making a bad economic situation even worse! Here are a few examples:

According to The Economist (March 12, 2011, Page 32):

“To buy off economic discontent, the Arab governments are introducing new handouts. The commonest is the old-fashioned wage rise. Saudi Arabia is boosting public-sector pay by 15% as part of a $36 billion spending splurge. Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Oman and Syria are all raising wages and benefits for public employees, though whether the 150% pay rise for Libyan civil servants will actually be paid is another matter.”

“Fuel subsidies are bigger. In 2009 they amounted to roughly $150 billion in the Middle East and North Africa. Oil then cost over $60 a barrel. It is now almost double that, so if prices were to stay at the same level regional fuel subsidies would rise to almost $300 billion this year. That is 7.5% of the area’s GDP, a vast amount. The only way to prevent such a jump would be to increase domestic fuel prices. But no countries have been brave enough to risk that except Qatar and Iran.”

Of course, this may buy the beleaguered rulers of these countries some time, but it cannot be a lasting answer, to the economic problems from which the people of those nations suffer. Similarly, the United States suffers from the same inept, shallow and shortsighted economic policies when ineffective and costly stimulus packages or the economically fatal and destructive measures of balancing budgets or arbitrary budget cuts are implemented.

Balancing budgets or budget cutting is only attractive and can only be considered viable when the economy enjoys full- or over-employment. In this case, extra employees are removed from the governmental agencies through increased productivity, and these labor forces are then integrated into the private sector. It would be an unlimited act of stupidity and ineptness to reduce governmental employees in order to cut the budget or to balance the budget in an economy that is suffering from high record unemployment rates. The government would then be creating additional unemployment costs, as well as adding to growing criminal and social costs of all types, while also adding to the economic misery of that economy as a whole.

WHAT ARE THE SOUND AND LASTING ANSWERS?

Despite the grave economic problems, a solid and sound economic plan would be to include these three goals:

1) To create income for all Americans with the creation of  new jobs in the private sectors of the economy;

2) To reduce the cost of living of all Americans;

3) To help Americans accumulate and protect true wealth for retirement.

It must be noted that in an economy based on these three goals, decreasing the cost of living has the same effect that increased salaries or wages do. Even when wages remain the same, purchasing power increases, when the cost of living goes down and when the living cost falls below wages, there is money remaining for savings.

This is the foundation of the Concept of a Zero-Cost Economy. For more details, please visit www.zerocosteconomy.com.

HOW TO ACHIEVE THESE GOALS?

In order to create jobs, we must realize that in a saturated economy like the one we have in the United States, we must stimulate demand in those manufacturing sectors whose products would help in reduce the cost of living. There are endless products of these types. Decentralized solar and wind energy systems belong to this category.

Further, we must create a public-friendly financial system, providing low-cost loans and mortgages to private households and small businesses. A financial system that is built to benefit the people and small businesses, within the communities.

Last, but not least, we must cut the cost of healthcare insurance by increasing the productivity in the healthcare delivery system along with rigorously cutting recurring cost and eliminating fraud.

Economy, Florida

North Dakota Is Booming

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Interesting article showing how North Dakota is not participating in the Obama recession. Their population, and jobs, are growing by the tens of thousands a year.

One obvious omission to the USA Today article is the economic engine that’s been running in North Dakota for nearly the last 100 years. That made everything else possible. It was something that Independent candidate for governor of the State of Florida, Farid Khavari, ran on. The state bank of North Dakota.

Florida Governor Rick Scott, please take note!

Link:  North Dakota economy booms, population soars

 

Politics

Is Boehner, Congress, In Violation Of Probation?

House Speaker John Boehner is facing a showdown, and it’s not between himself and President Obama. Contrary to his bold statements of a few short weeks ago regarding turning this government around from its debt and spending binge, Speaker Boehner is turning out to be one of those establishment Republicans, apparently ready to ignore the people who put him where he is today, and the reason he is there.

He seems to want to forgive and forget Speaker Pelosi’s House that changed the rules, locked out Republicans, and used every trick in the book to force Obamacare down America’s collective throat. Speaker Pelosi wasn’t lying when she said we would have to pass the bill first in order to see what’s in it. Which is just what that Democrat-controlled House and Senate did. Which makes sense to who?

Of all people, Speaker Boehner shouldn’t need to be reminded why we are even discussing CR’s today. But apparently he does. It’s because the Democrat-controlled congress failed to make a budget last summer, on purpose. They knew their sneaky maneuvers would have been exposed had they done so.

Representatives Spence and Bachman, and now Senator Rubio are exactly right to put on the brakes and right that wrong.

“I think we have to have a fight. I think this is the moment,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told POLITICO prior to the vote. “Things don’t change around here until they have to, and Republicans ought to draw a line in the sand.”

Sen. Rubio says . . .

‘What is this continuing resolution crap? I didn’t come in here to fund the government every two to three weeks, and $6 billion here and $6 billion there. What the hell is going on here?’”

Of course, they are right. Republicans, and Democrats are still on probation from November’s general election. For Speaker Boehner, this is no time to go wobbly. In the psyche of the American people, you are in violation of probation.